by B M Gill
"No."
"Did he get into the locker room to get his suitcase?"
"I hadn't thought of looking."
Well, bloody look, Brannigan thought, but phrased it more politely.
He called in all the housemasters and the senior prefects and sent them to search the school and the grounds. In the meantime Sherborne returned to say that he had left without his suitcase. "All his clothes are here – except his daytime clothes and his mack. He left his bed unmade. It's quite likely he's hiding somewhere in the grounds." His voice, rough with anxiety, spoke without conviction.
"Why, should he do that?"
"Why do small boys do anything?"
"He's eleven. Not an infant. Old enough to reason out his actions."
Sherborne felt a vascular pain in the back of his left leg and was forced to take the nearest chair and sit for a few minutes. When the pain eased he reminded Brannigan that Durrant had gone home twice without reason. "Nobody bullied him."
Brannigan thought, nobody would dare, but didn't voice it. Durrant was a step outside the circle and always would be. Corley was an ordinary, normal, small boy.
David Fleming had been an ordinary, normal, small boy.
Had been.
The anxiety that had been building up like water against a dam began treacherously to break through. He forced ''himself to contain it.
The search parties returned in half an hour without success.
At nine-fifteen he put a call through to Corley's father at Bridgwater. Alison came into his study and sat in the chair in the window recess as he made it. Blame the boy, she willed him silently. Don't break the news so gently, so defensively.
Let your anger come up. The boy betrays you, not you the boy. He's lucky to have the chance to be here. If he throws that chance back at you then he's a stupid, idiotic, little brat. My father would have taken the hide off him, but you won't, will you – if he's caught. You'll speak sweet reason at him, as you do with all of them. You're soft – that's your trouble. You can't run a school like a young ladies' dancing academy, or a nursing home. Pity is your undoing. Why pity anyone? No-one pities you… The words hurtled through her mind so that she couldn't hear what Brannigan was saying and then she forced herself to listen.
He was still apologising, still soothing. "Try not to worry. Boys sometimes act on impulse – perhaps a row with another lad – I don't know… Yes, of course I intend calling in the police… No, I don't think it would be wise of you to come over. He probably hasn't got very far, but there's always the chance he's making for home. You'd be wiser to stay there and let me know when he arrives… Yes. naturally, I'll keep you informed. I'm sorry I had to give you such disturbing news. It will be good news soon, I hope… Yes, I agree, he's a very level-headed, pleasant child… No, I'm, sure he wouldn't have left without a reason… I assure… Naturally, you're upset… Try to keep calm about it for the lad's sake… When he does turn up keep it in a low key… Give my regards and sympathy to Mrs. Corley and assure her that everything is being done to find the boy… to find Neville."
He put the phone down, sweating slightly. He had juggled the conversation, carefully avoiding using the lad's name until Corley senior had mentioned it. Neville. The name had escaped his mind. It didn't speak so highly of the quality of care when a lad's Christian name was as elusive as a dandelion seed on the breeze.
He wished Alison would stop looking at him like that. She made him feel like Uriah Heep. What did she expect him to do – beat his jackboots with a horsewhip while breaking the news?
"And now – what?" she asked tiredly. "The police?"
"The police – and afterwards Colonel Goldthorpe."
"And the rest of the governors, too, I suppose? It's like living in the days of the inquisition. Why drag them into it?"
"It's better they should hear about it directly from me."
"It's better no-one should hear about it at ali. You could have waited another hour before telling the boy's father – before calling in the police."
He held on to his patience. "A child is missing – a child is at risk."
"And the school is at risk. It has been ever since the Fleming child died."
He ignored her and began dialling the number of Marristone police station. Detective Inspector Grant came on the line and from him he at last got the support he needed. The school would be searched – this time professionally – and the surrounding countryside would be searched. All patrols would be alerted as soon as he had personal details of the lad. He would be up at the school in fifteen minutes. In cases like these the child was usually found quite quickly. He made it sound very easy and ordinary. Brannigan imagined a Pied Piper line of young Corleys making their way through the countryside and coming up against Grant's substantial midriff one by one. He had been very cool and phlegmatic about David Fleming, too. That time he had been presented with a fait accompli – this time there was a chance of doing something about it.
As soon as he put the phone down it rang again almost immediately..
"Is that the headmaster, Mr. Brannigan?"
"Yes." He thought it was Mrs. Corley and felt a lurch of dismay. Speaking to the lad's father had been bad enough.
"This is Lorena Durrant – Steven's mother." The raucous voice should have been familiar and now that he heard it again it jogged his memory of several irritating conversations he had had with her in the past.
"Good morning, Mrs. Durrant."
His eyes met Alison's and for the first time that day sympathy was mutual.
"Good morning." She pushed out the greeting as if she were dropping a wasp through a window, and then got on quickly with what she had to say. "It was my birthday on Tuesday. I had a most extraordinary present from Steven. I really can't get over it."
Jesus God, Brannigan thought, she's on about the Keats. He remembered Durrani's embarrassment as he had stood at the study door and asked for permission to go down to the town to buy it. Why in the name of sanity was she ringing him up to complain about it? Especially now.
He tried not to speak irritably, but failed. "Some people like that sort of thing. The boy was trying to please you."
"Oh, so you knew about it, then? I thought perhaps you did."
"Yes – he asked my permission to go down to the town to buy it."
The words, like bullets leaving a gun-barrel, cracked out sharply, "And where did he get the money from, Mr. Brannigan? Answer me that?"
She was using up valuable telephone time and he was tempted to put the phone down, but if he did she would ring him back and keep ringing him back.
"I'm busy, Mrs. Durrant. Do you think you could come to the point?"
"The point – oh yes, Mr. Brannigan, I can come to the point. The point is the amount of money my husband sends to Steven – and doesn't send to me. What is he trying to do – buy the boy's affection? Inveigle him away from me?"
Brannigan, at a loss, waited. There was no affection from either parent, and there wasn't much in the way of money either. Durrant senior gave the boy mighty little in either hard cash or fatherly interest.
Not getting a response, she went on. "At first I didn't think anything of it. I'm not well up in these things. And then one of my friends saw it and read the name on it. Would it surprise you to know that it didn't cost Steven a penny less than eighty pounds?"
It surprised Brannigan very much. The woman must be mad. The local bookshop didn't go in for first editions.
He spoke mildly, "Your friend must have misled you. Steven spent less than five pounds."
"Not on that camera, he didn't. My friend's an expert.
He's done model photography for the high quality artistic market. If Steven's father is giving him that sort of pocket money then he's earning a sight more than he tells me he's earning."
Brannigan, about to say it wasn't a camera, stopped himself. If she said it was, then it was. Even Durrant would know better than to send his mother a book of love poems – but why tell him he was
going out to buy a book of Keats when he wasn't? And where did he get the money from? Obviously if not from his mother then from his father. His father might have had a win on the horses or something. But if he had he wouldn't send it to the boy. Or would he? Hammond might know. As housemaster he was responsible for the boys' money.
He told Mrs. Durrant he would put her through to Hammond and then remembered that Hammond was taking a class. "Or rather – I'll ask him to call you back as soon as he's free."
"And I want to talk to Steven, too."
"Naturally. I'll arrange that as well."
It was after he put the phone down that he remembered that Durrant had come to ask him for the money – and that he had given him six pounds. Eighty? The silly woman was sleeping with a porn photographer who was either cretinous or as high as a kite.
Alison asked, "What was that all about?"
"Rubbish. Lorena Durrani's bed companion is a crass idiot."
"It's a pity," Alison said, "that you can't use that tone of voice all the time."
After the police had come and gone and left him with the feeling that he could lean back against a solid, professional and very comforting wall, Goldthorpe came and effectively kicked it away again. He spoke much as Alison had spoken and told him he should get in touch with Lessing forthwith. He had even used the word 'forthwith'. 'Substantial financial loss" occurred frequently, too. David Fleming's death was a wounding – Corley's disappearance a possible deathblow. Brannigan, tiring of him, told him crisply that his military metaphors were completely out of place. A child had disappeared; he was concerned for the safety of that child. At this moment his concern was focussed there and nowhere else.
Goldthorpe, surprised, climbed down a little. "All the same, it would do no harm to have Lessing up here, Headmaster. As an old boy, he has the welfare of the school very much at heart."
"And I haven't – is that what you're implying?"
Goldthorpe took his leave huffily. "I'm not implying anything of the sort. What a ridiculous thing to say! I'll be in touch with you again when you're calmer."
Brannigan saw Goldthorpe to the door and noticed before closing it that Jenny was on her way to the stairs. He called after her. "Nurse Renshaw – could you give me a moment or two please?"
"Yes, of course." She had been informed about Corley's disappearance and was as worried as he was. She said impulsively, "I'm terribly sorry. I know what you're feeling."
He told her to sit down. "Jenny – do you know Corley's Christian name?"
The question surprised her. "Yes – don't you? It's Neville."
"You didn't even have to think about it, did you?"
She didn't understand where the question was leading and he didn't explain.
He said, "He's a small red-headed child of eleven with buck teeth and a Somerset accent – I'm right, am I not?"
"You're right."
He had put the child's face together slowly in his mind after going through a mental putting-together of all the other children in his House – like a slowly-formed identikit picture Corley had finally emerged. A school photograph that Sherborne had unearthed had confirmed it. The police were working from the photograph.
"You know the lads pretty well, Jenny."
"I've had most of them in the infirmary at one time or another."
"Tell me about Corley." He corrected himself. "Tell me about Neville."
The question found an echo in her mind. Tell me about David.
She answered thoughtfully. "He's introverted. A worrier. He says he's fine when he isn't because he's scared he'll be told he's worse than he is." She paused wondering if that made sense and decided it did. She tried to clarify it more. "When I took his temperature once I caught him putting the thermometer in a glass of cold water before handing it to me."
"So what do we deduce from that? That he wouldn't go to anyone for help… not even to you?"
"I don't know if he needed help. If he did, he didn't come to me."
"Have you heard anything from any of the other boys about him?"
"No. He was a loner. He'd carry whatever it was by himself."
"I see." He sat back in his chair and looked at her. "And now tell me about Fleming – Fleming senior."
She looked away from him. "I don't know what you mean."
"Jenny – you're living in a small community within a small town. The wife of one of the housemasters told me she saw you in a blue car with John Fleming the night before last." He hoped she wouldn't guess that the wife of the housemaster was Alison. Alison had gone on about the undesirability of a member of staff associating with Fleming "as he's so damnably hostile". He had irritated her by answering lightly that these days collaborators didn't have their heads shorn.
Jenny, knowing full well that it was Alison, decided not to say so. Brannigan was suffering enough.
"Are you forbidding me to see John Fleming?"
He knew it wouldn't make any difference if he did. "No. You're free to do as you like – and to see your loyalties whichever way you want to see them."
"Loyalties aren't flags you carry, one in each hand. I'd do everything I could to help him. If the school is to blame for anything, you wouldn't hide it. If I thought differently I would have resigned long ago."
He took it for the compliment it was and was grateful.
She said, sensing that the time was right to ask it, "I should like to have time off to be at the inquest tomorrow afternoon."
He could see that she was stiffening into a defensive attitude expecting him to refuse.
"Of course you may go. Alison will be sitting on her own while I give evidence I can't persuade her not to attend. She's extremely nervous and worried. Your being with her will help."
To hold Alison's hand hadn't been her intention, but there was no way out of it.
He told her that Lessing was representing the school. "And I'm told there's to be a jury." Lessing had told him this. "Seven local tradesmen," Lessing had said, "all rooting for the Grange. They feed it, they plumb it, they paint it and they wash its windows They're not likely to pull the plug out." Brannigan had commented acidly on Lessing's code of ethics and Lessing had taken it for the joke it wasn't.
A couple of hours later, during lunchtime, Lessing arrived at the school house. He walked straight through into the dining room, meeting Alison in the doorway as she was on her way to the kitchen to fetch the coffee. She offered him some, but he declined. "I can't stay. I have an appointment with a client in twenty minutes."
After she was out of earshot he said aggnevedly to Brannigan, "You should have informed me, you know."
"I gather Goldthorpe did?"
"Yes – but after I'd heard it in the town first."
"Damn!" Brannigan made a fist of his right hand and then uncurled his fingers slowly Where gossip was concerned the school was like water running through a colander.
Lessing shrugged. "The place is crawling with police. What do you expect?… Any news of the lad yet?"
"No." He had been ringing the police station every hour on the hour and Corley's father had been ringing him at even more frequent intervals. The phone bell was like the rubbing away of insulating tape over an electric wire He wondered if the child would be found before his own personal flashpoint seared his control Lessing said, "Sit down I have something to say to you It isn't pleasant"
Brannigan's face seemed visibly to thin so that the bones were prominent "Go on "
"I think the child who's disappeared had good reason to disappear – if he's the child I saw here the other day "
"Describe him "
"About ten or eleven, small build, red hair. He had been frightened to the point of throwing up " He went on to tell Brannigan about the boy running from the direction of the hollow "I went to investigate, but I saw no-one. I have no doubt at all that there was someone there Does the description fit the boy who's gone?"
"Yes."
"Then you've a problem on your hands – a nasty one. I di
dn't tell you because you've worry enough with the Fleming case. I intended telling you after the inquest. That was a misjudgment on my part. I'm sorry."
Brannigan said heavily, "Obviously there was a reason for his going. It's not.pleasant having it confirmed. You say he vomited?"
"Yes – with fright. And his hands had been tied. He managed to loosen the knot" He didn't add that he had dropped the tie in the bushes – a temporary tidying away of a disturbing situation "It's more than normal bullying. I thought you were fussing too much over Fleming's accident Now I'm not at all sure that it was an accident. I won't say so at the inquest, of course, but I'm telling you. Praemomtus, praemumtus. Forewarned is forearmed. You see, I haven't forgotten my Latin." He smiled wetly, but with genuine sympathy. "Damned good school this."
Alison waited until he had gone before returning. "What did he want?"
He decided not to tell her. "He'd heard about Corley – through Goldthorpe."
"And by the look of you made you see how serious it is. The school's good name is being ruined by an irresponsible little brat… Where are you going?" He was walking over to the door.
He nearly said, To breathe – to get away from yon. "To my study. Durrant can make his phone call to his mother from there."
"Durrant? You're bothered about Durrant – now? At a time like this?"
Yes, lie thought, he was particularly bothered about Durrant at a time like this.
He sent for Hammond first. He had asked him to make the phone call as quickly as he could. "Or she'll keep hogging the line." He hadn't bothered asking him the result of it. He asked him now.
Hammond said mildly, "She's crazy. I told her the boy had started the term with eight pounds in his account – and that if any more money had come through he would have given it to me to bank for him. She wanted to know if I opened his letters. I said my duties here were to teach not to run a censorship department."
Unwise, Brannigan thought, but didn't blame him.
"She didn't take that kindly. She even had the gall to talk about a moral duty to open his letters. Moral duty! Mrs. Durrant!" It was the only funny thing that had happened to him for days.